


A Peaceful Greeting

by I May Age Regress (shnuffeluv)



Series: Gibbs' Family [65]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Alcohol, American Sign Language, Arguing, Episode Tag, Episode: s04e01 Shalom, Gen, Gibbs Returns, Grumpy Jethro Gibbs, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memory Loss, Recovered Memories, someone Gibbs slap gibbs for me please?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 01:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11326035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shnuffeluv/pseuds/I%20May%20Age%20Regress
Summary: Set immediately after Season 4 Episode 1: Shalom. Ziva goes to Gibbs' house and attempts to get him to stay in the US. Nothing goes exactly as planned. First half of a return arc, readAny Hiatus is Painfulbefore this!





	A Peaceful Greeting

Gibbs was sitting in the basement of his house, a bottle of bourbon in his hand. He still found it hard to believe he lived here. Ziva had explained the long and short of how DiNozzo and McGee had been while he was gone, although it was clear she wasn't saying everything. It was also clear everyone wanted him to stay. He took a long dreg of bourbon and sighed. Every moment he was back here, he just felt _wrong_.

It was true he had a plane to catch back to Mexico. But it was also true that it wasn't for a good three hours at least. He was just tired of the stares he got wherever he went at NCIS. People who he didn't know who knew everything about him.

So when he heard the front door open and footsteps approach the basement, all Gibbs thought was that it better not be DiNozzo or McGee. Ziva appeared at the top of the steps and Gibbs sighed. Marginally better than his other options, but he was sure he was still in for a headache from something other than the bourbon. "Want a drink?" he asked her.

"No, thank you," Ziva said, walking down and joining him at the table, leaning against the top of it.

Gibbs was sitting in the only chair and he didn't feel like giving it up. "Then why are you here?"

"To try and get you to stay," Ziva said, raising her hands in a half-helpless, _what can you do_  manner.

"No," Gibbs said. " _Now_ do you want a drink?"

"Why?" Ziva asked.

"Well, normally when people have just been exonerated for murder, the first thing they really want is a shot of--"

"I _meant_  why won't you stay?" Ziva asked, crossing her arms.

Gibbs sipped the bourbon and looked at the boat frame still sitting in the room, covered in dust and grime from not being worked on in months. "There were things that happened in this house. Things I would rather not remember."

Ziva hummed. "That would be surrounding your family, yes? Shannon and Kelly?"

Gibbs scowled and shook his head. "Dunno what was going on, but it was with DiNozzo and McGee, and no one else seems to know about it. Gives me the creeps every time a memory about it pops up."

Ziva stood upright and faced Gibbs fully. "You...remember that?"

Gibbs nodded, lips twisting in disgust.

"And you just...left them here?!" Ziva asked, voice rising. "Those boys _need_  you, Gibbs!"

"They're not boys," Gibbs told her. "They're adults. And they managed just fine without me for four months. They'll live when I go back to Mexico."

Ziva scoffed and turned her head away. "I cannot believe you! This, coming from the man who would incriminate himself before _ever_  letting them get hurt?!"

"I'm not that man!" Gibbs snapped back. "That man is gone! And he's not coming back!"

Ziva's face became solemn. "Tony gets nightmares almost every night of someone on his team, the one you so unceremoniously forced on him, dying. He imagines your voice mocking him and telling him it is all your fault."

Gibbs got a flash of a memory, Tony screaming over a baby monitor, clawing at his face while asleep, and him trying to pry off Tony's hands before he seriously hurt himself. He sent Ziva a warning glance, which she ignored.

"Timmy tries to comfort him, but he is not much better off. And he misses your detergent on his baby blanket."

Another image, of when Gibbs first handed the soft blue blanket over. Timmy had grinned so hard he complained about his cheeks hurting later, and he threw his arms around Gibbs in thanks. The relief Gibbs felt the next morning when he realized he hadn't heard a cry over the baby monitor the night before, and Timmy almost taking the blanket to work with him.

Gibbs growled and rubbed a hand down his face. "They can deal with that themselves. I'm not their babysitter."

"No, you are their father!" Ziva barked. "You're more a father to them than anyone else ever was! Even after being gone for four months, they would forgive you in a heartbeat if it meant you never left them again! You have a responsibility here, Gibbs, one that you are sorely neglecting!"

"Don't you _dare_  tell me how to live my life!" Gibbs ordered back. "How would _you_  feel if you were in my place?!"

"I do not know," Ziva seethed. "But I _do_  know I would not neglect two people who needed me purely because _I_  felt some discomfort at the thought of helping people I barely knew!"

"'Some discomfort'?!" Gibbs repeated. "You call finding out you had some sort of...intimate relationship with your employees 'some discomfort'?!"

"You make it sound sexual!" Ziva scoffed. When Gibbs didn't respond, her head whipped around so fast her hair smacked over half of her face. "Gibbs...you _know_  this was not sexual, _yes_?"

"No," Gibbs spat. "I only get little glimpses of memories. Most of them don't stick around."

Ziva ran a hand through her hair. "Do you need someone to explain it to you?" she asked, voice strained. "Because I will not let you leave without understanding what you did to those boys when you went to Mexico the first time."

Gibbs shrugged. "Fine. Explain it to me. Doesn't mean I won't be taking the first flight back there in three hours."

Ziva took a deep breath. "Fine. Let's start with the beginning, yes? The way you told me about finding out about it, was because Tony was acting strange at work."

"DiNozzo," Gibbs corrected.

Ziva huffed. "Sorry?"

"DiNozzo," Gibbs repeated. "He's DiNozzo, not Tony."

"Only at work," Ziva said. "And even that is debatable. Regardless. Tony was acting strange at work. You said he had some bad habits, like sucking his thumb, or at least looking like he was about to."

Gibbs tilted his head up in recognition. Some of his first memories of DiNozzo had been surrounding that.

"He also kept a baby blanket in his desk, yes? As far as I know he still does. When you asked him what he was doing, he explained what age regression was to you. And you offered your help to him. Though from what I understand, you never expected him to take you up on the offer.

"He did anyway, though. He came over one night. And one night became two, then three, until this was almost a regular occurrence."

Gibbs held up a hand, trying to absorb all this information. He didn't get the impression Ziva was lying to him, but how did this...how in the world did it make any sense? And how did any of this mean it wasn't sexual? Ziva hadn't even explained what "this" was, beyond using the words "age regression," and he had no idea what that meant. "How long did this go on for?"

"As far as I understand, about one year and a half before Kate joined your team," Ziva said. "And it only progressed from there."

"Progressed...how?" Gibbs asked. His memories about Kate were only work-oriented. And even that got a little fuzzy around the edges.

"Well, one night, she found out about you and Tony," Ziva said. "And she decided she wanted to join in at least once, to understand why she might see the appeal."

"And?" Gibbs asked when Ziva paused.

Ziva looked down. "And...she enjoyed it. So she joined in your little family. And it was just you, her, and Tony for a year, before McGee joined your team."

Gibbs frowned. He only had fleeting images of what happened after hours, but he did see a woman who must have been Kate in a few of them, and the images seemed to be staying around longer. "And this thing...continued with McGee?"

"Yes," Ziva confirmed. "He latched onto the idea like a...breech?"

"Leach," Gibbs offered.

"Yes, that," Ziva said. "He rather enjoyed it, even though he worried about getting into trouble."

"His father abused him," Gibbs said softly, remembering clear as day the sheer terror on his face when faced with the idea of punishment. "Frequently, from what I understand."

Ziva nodded, silent. "You were helping him. Him _and_  Tony. They both needed the support this offered. And you took that away from them when you left."

"Kate? Why did she use it?" he asked softly. The possible answers scared him, but he needed to know.

"She used it to relax, rather than to cope," Ziva murmured. "In that respect, she was fine. But she needed you as much as any of the others did before she died."

"How...do you even know all of this?" Gibbs asked.

Ziva looked away. "Tony has to come over to my place frequently to calm down, as well as Ducky's when I cannot be there for him. Having no one else to confide in, he confided in me."

"What does he say?"

"Curious, are you?" Ziva asked. "Or do you feel a paternal nature that everyone had assumed left you?"

"Neither," Gibbs said. "But you seem to want me to know all these useless things, we may as well get this over with quicker."

Ziva's jaw clenched. "He wishes you were back. Every night. He can't bear all the responsibility of the team all the time, and he constantly worries, even when he has no reason to. He worries about Timmy, because Timmy will push himself to the absolute limits he can bear if it means taking some of the work off Tony's shoulders. He worries about Lee, because she is sorely inexperienced and needs double the work any other agent on this team would need to get the job done correctly. He worries about me, and Ducky, and Abby, and Palmer, because our jobs put us in constant danger. He's constantly plagued with nightmares, anxiety, worst case scenarios...there have been times where McGee and I have had to almost physically drag him from his desk just to eat. He is apparently a recovering anorexic, and high anxiety or one misplaced comment could cause him to relapse. He is a mess, and most of all...he misses his Papa."

That final word felt like a slap in the face. Gibbs took another sip of bourbon, growled, and stood, pointing towards the stairs. "Go."

Ziva stared at him. "Make me. I am not done."

Gibbs put the bourbon on the table and growled at her. "What could you _possibly_  have to say that doesn't cover what you've already said?"

"The others wanted some final words before you left again, on the off chance I could find you," Ziva said.

"Yeah? What'd they wanna say?" Gibbs asked.

Ziva held up her right hand, middle and ring fingers touching her palm but the others outstretched. _I LOVE YOU._  "This is from Timmy," she said. "I am not entirely sure what it means but he wanted it signed, specifically."

Gibbs' mind flashed back to Abby's lab, Timmy bouncing on his toes as he held up that sign for the first time. He looked away, wishing the memory would leave, but it stayed clear in his mind.

"And Tony didn't have any complicated signs or words, just two simple sentences. 'Thanks for everything, Papa. Sorry that you don't want to be bothered anymore'."

And then Gibbs was back in the nursery upstairs, explaining to Tony, who was resting on his chest, how he wanted to be bothered if it meant Tony could be happy, because that would make _him_  happy. Gibbs hung his head and sighed. Ziva had a point. At some point in time, those boys had meant the world to him, and he meant the world to them. If he left again, with no warning...it might break them. "What do you suggest I do?"

"Stay," Ziva said. "At least for a little while, at least long enough to decide whether you really want to go back. Give it a week. And if you still want to leave, we won't keep you. Just know what you're leaving behind."

And with that, Ziva turned and left. Gibbs rolled his eyes once she was gone. Not at her, but at what he was about to do. He pulled out his phone and dialed the local bar closest to Franks' place. " _Hola_ ," a woman's voice said.

"Can you get a message to Mike Franks for me?" Gibbs asked.

"Señor Gibbs, is something wrong?" the woman asked.

"No, no. I'm just...selling the house up here. I'm gonna need some time to get everything sorted," Gibbs said.

"How much time should I say you'll be gone?"

"Oh," Gibbs pretended to think. "Give or take a week."

"I will tell him. Have a good day, Señor Gibbs."

"You too," Gibbs sighed, and hung up.

What was he getting himself into?

One thing Gibbs knew for sure, if he was going to stay around, he was going to have to face his memories sooner or later. He walked out of the basement, looking around. Everything was still untouched from months ago. He planned to change at least a little bit of that tonight.

He moved to the next flight of stairs, heading towards the nursery that he had been avoiding. Bracing himself, he took a deep breath for strength and walked in.

The memories seemed to pop up the second he smelled it. Despite the dust settling everywhere he could still smell something underneath, like a cross of baby powder and shampoo and...something else he couldn't pin down. He moved into the room, turning around and around, trying to absorb everything that had happened here. He looked toward the bed which was across from the crib, and he could almost see a top bunk, and a girl with a stuffed teddy bear hugged close to her chest sleeping on it.

He had the same bear in his room, didn't he? Should he go look? Any excuse to get out of here and process what was going on. Memories bouncing around his brain before settling into place like coins in a slot, Gibbs made his way to his room. There were too many nights spent in that nursery from a nightmare or an accident, but there were also sleepy mornings and bedtime stories that brought the ghost of a smile to Gibbs' face.

The bear was still there, sitting on his dresser next to a bottle of perfume. He frowned and took the perfume off the dresser, spraying some onto the bear for a scent, and putting it back before giving the bear a sniff.

Memories ran loose in his head, freed by the scent. Kate, both on hours and off. Her smiling at the team, or getting even with their comments. Her body, lying on a rooftop, blood pooling underneath. The bear almost slipped through Gibbs' fingers as tears came to his eyes. Too much information, too many bad days, and too many good days that made him feel absolutely terrible to have left. Ziva couldn't have meant what she said about the others forgiving him so long as he promised to stay. What he did to them...he couldn't even imagine at this point. He didn't think he _deserved_  to stay.

...He had promised to give it a week first, however. His stomach was uncomfortably tight at the thought that he most likely wouldn't have a reason to stay.

But it was worse when he realized he might.


End file.
